In order to promote the creation of industry standards that would make the firms’ developing digital worlds compatible with one another, Meta, Microsoft, and other tech behemoths vying to establish the metaverse idea have formed a consortium.
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), as well as other well-known standards-setting organizations, are among the participants in the Metaverse Standards Forum, according to a statement released by the group on Tuesday announcing its formation.
Apple is conspicuously absent from the membership list at the moment, but many predict that if it releases a mixed reality headset this year or next, it will dominate the metaverse competition.
The developing crypto-based metaverse platforms The Sandbox and Decentraland, as well as the gaming firms Roblox and Niantic, were not participants in the forum.
Although media claims that Apple gave its board an early glimpse of the gadget, the company has not yet officially revealed plans for a headset. A request for a remark about the new metaverse forum was not immediately answered.
By releasing such a product, Apple would be in direct competition with Meta, a company that has pinned its future on the expansion of the metaverse and has made significant hardware investments to realize its goal of linked virtual worlds.
A mixed-reality headgear with the codename “Cambria” will be introduced this year, according to Meta, formerly known as Facebook until changing its name as part of its metaverse pivot last year.
In the past, Apple has contributed significantly to the development of web standards like HTML5. Apple collaborated with Pixar on the “USDZ” file format and with Adobe to make sure it was supported for three-dimensional media in the metaverse.
Any organization is allowed to join the forum, including members from the crypto sector, according to Neil Trevett, an executive at chip maker Nvidia who is presiding over the Metaverse Standards Forum.
Without addressing how Apple’s absence might effect that objective, he stated that the forum wants to encourage dialogue between a number of standards bodies and businesses to bring about “real-world interoperability” in the metaverse.
